If this had been your question to the answer, you would have earned about -500 points for it. In fact, this year’s Hacker Jeopardy is a dual language event, but due to shortcomings in our scheduling system there is no way to reflect that kind of information. So, join us even if you don’t understand German, and be surprised by one of the funniest (or maybe the funniest) event at the Congress ever.

See you tomorrow at 23:00 in Saal 1â€”and bring your DECT phone!

Posted in 24C3, English | Comments Off on Hacker Jeopardy in German only? Wrong!

The year is 1839. The British Empire seizes Hong Kong as a base, preparing to wage war against Qing China. The world’s first commercial electric telegraph line comes into operation alongside the Great Western Railway line from Paddington station to West Drayton. And in Manchester, George Bradshaw, cartographer, printer and publisher, prepares a revolutionary publication on the recently established railways: the first ever timetable for public transportation, a cloth-bound book entitled Bradshaw’s Railway Time Tables and Assistant to Railway Travelling (the title being changed in 1840 to Bradshaw’s Railway Companion).

Bradshaw’s timetable changed the perception of technology: people suddenly realized that while a single train is extremely useful, the railways showed their full usefulness as a network of trains, interconnected as a radical new way of communication, potentially for everyone. With the first timetable, the steam age had its definitive listing of data protocol definitions and RFCs. Full steam ahead! Volldampf voraus!